Inmate sentenced for assault on 70-year-old nurse

A Michigan Department of Corrections inmate was given additional prison time for brutally assaulting a 70-year-old nurse practitioner.

Jeremy Daniel Taylor, 29, was sentenced Thursday to four years to 15 years in prison for assaulting a nurse practitioner as she discussed medical care with him in June.

“I’ve got to worry about protection of these prison employees, and I also have to be very concerned about the deterrence factor of having prisoners attack or harm defenseless medical personnel,” Livingston County Circuit Judge Michael P. Hatty said as he announced the sentence.

Assistant Prosecutor Daniel Rose asked the judge to consider the victim and what it meant for the nurse’s employment as he considered the probation office’s recommendation for a four-year prison term. He also asked the judge to consider the manner of the attack and Taylor’s prior conviction for a 2013 assault of a prison employee.

Rose said a video recording of the assault shows Taylor speaking with a nurse practitioner and then punching her without provocation.

The punch knocked the woman off a chair and onto the floor, where Taylor continues “wailing away” on the woman, Rose said, adding that the woman left her employment immediately following the attack.

Defense attorney Terry Olson did not dispute Rose’s explanation, but he said what one cannot see on the video tape is “what’s going on in my client’s head.” He asked for a minimum prison sentence of two years and cited his client’s mental illness as a factor.

“My client's not acting in these ways, I think, because he’s an evil person. … When he’s medicated, he’s actually a pleasant human being,” Olson said. “He’s hearing voices. … I have no doubt that there are things going on inside his head, I’ll classify them as demons, and that’s why he acted as he acted.”

Taylor who is housed at the Woodland Center Correctional Facility in Green Oak Township, has a criminal history that includes convictions in Livingston County for assault of a prison employee, in Wayne County for second-degree home invasion and in Monroe County for breaking and entering a building with intent.